Boundary Infrastructures for Conversational Knowledge Federation

One of the primary tools of collective intelligence is conversation. Conversation takes many forms, from interactive storytelling, to an emerging lingua franca of structured conversation, Issue-based information systems (IBIS) and related forms of contested discourse. Conversation federation facilitates improved collective intelligence for sensemaking and for decision making. Federating conversations is performed through topic mapping processes where conversations are organized around the subjects they entail. While each conversation is, itself, a subject, each conversation is about one or more subjects. Structured conversations created in IBIS settings are typically rooted in a central topic or central question (issue). Where conversations are about the same topic or issue, they federate—that is, they are combined through a topic mapping merge process that maintains a well-organized map of the combined conversations. A goal that animates collective intelligence is collective wisdom; making wise decisions. We describe a platform aimed to serve such a goal.